IL DANTE PROFETA DI ERNESTO BUONAIUTI

The intent of the contribution is to present the main characters of the interpretation of Dante Alighieri’s poetics by Ernesto Buonaiuti, priest and pro- fessor of History of Christianity, and central figure of the modernist movement in Italy. In his publications Buonaiuti connects in a different way from the usual interpretation, Dante’s world not so much, or rather not only, to the rationalism of Thomist scholasticism, but to the apocalyptic and reformist vein of Christian- ity, represented in the thirteenth century by the figures of Joachim of Fiore and Francis of Assisi. Within this interpretative representation there will be three elements highlighted: the conception of love, understood as a cathartic moment of rebirth; the figure of the woman, represented by Beatrice, who enters the cul- tural scene to become assistant of the passage to a new life; the apocalypse, to which the life of the Church is destined.